


I Thought You Were American

by collieflower



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Bisexual Maxine "Max" Mayfield, Coming Out, F/F, Gay Will Byers, Late Night Conversations, Lesbian Eleven | Jane Hopper, M/M, Past Eleven | Jane Hopper/Mike Wheeler, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pining, Sibling Bonding, he deserves the world, i gave will a good bf because i love will, imagine competing with a lesbian for a boyfriend, some homophobic language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:34:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21557080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/collieflower/pseuds/collieflower
Summary: "That's the word. Lesbian." She repeated the word softly, a little furrow in her brow.She gave extra care to the syllables and how they were crafted, even for such a simple word likelesbian.Then, Will guessed, maybe the care was for the importance. It was like when she first started calling JoyceMom. She said it with a reverence in her voice — the kind Will put on when they talked to royalty in a campaign. This was something important."Lesbian," she said again, smiling this time. "I'm lesbian.""Alesbian," Will corrected.
Relationships: Eleven | Jane Hopper/Maxine "Max" Mayfield, Will Byers & Eleven | Jane Hopper, Will Byers/Original Male Character(s)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 186





	I Thought You Were American

**Author's Note:**

> CONTENT WARNING: There are a few f-slurs in here. If you're sensitive to that, I'd ask that you proceed with caution
> 
> this work is based solely on the _I'm lesbian | I thought u were american_ vine, please take note.
> 
> i actually wrote this as a bit for nanowrimo. I loved it when i wrote it and i still love it now.
> 
> before you ask, yes i am procrastinating on nano by posting this fic. thanks for coming to my powerpoint presentation on why El Hopper is a bonafide lesbean.

A knock on his bedroom door almost had Will’s pen dragging across his page. To his luck, of course, he jerked _up_ rather than across. He twisted to look at the door, like he had an extra special sense to tell him who knocked. Or X-ray vision. That would be cool.

She knocked again — because it did have to be a _she_. Johnathan was four states over, breaking his back over classes and student debts. Yeah, it was just Will and El and Mom in the house, now.

Aware of how bare he was to the gentle March air coming in through the window, he picked up a t-shirt slung over his messy bed and pulled it on.

“Will?” El’s voice was hushed to a volume only ever used when Joyce was asleep, or maybe when she asked Will about things like _kissing_ , or what _necking_ was.

He twisted the lock on the knob and pulled the door open, raising his eyebrows at her. “Yeah?”

She was in her robe and her hair was stringy and wet, dipping into her eyes.

“Did you lose something? Like your…” He scrunched up his hair. “I dunno what it’s called.” He didn’t know much about her hair products, other than the fact that he lived with an empty bathroom counter until El and Joyce started putting their own products down and filling the space up with bottles and creams.

She shook her head, and her hair moved with her. Blessedly not enough to to shake out any water out onto his floor — or worse yet, _him_.

“Can I come in?”

He opened the door wider for her and she skirted past him, leaving Will to shut the door behind her. She didn't flop down on his bed like she usually did when she got tired of staring at her own walls. He watched her fidget in the middle of his room. She wrung her fingers together. Her jaw tightened and set like she was chewing through the words she wanted to say, looking for reasons to stay silent like fragments of glass.

The pages of his notebook fluttered as the wind picked up, spilling through the windows like water through a colander. He shivered and goosebumps rose along his arms and neck. An uncomfortable feeling itched its way through his body, replaying memories that could very easily be described as _cold_. It set his teeth on edge. Bile threatened to rise up his throat.

"Are... you okay?" he asked as he crossed the room. He scooped up the jacket lying crooked over the back of his desk chair and yanked his arms through the sleeves. He shut the window, too. Maybe a little harder than intended, because the noise startled them both. El snapped to look at him like she had forgotten where she was and whose room she invaded. She shook her head clear and finally took her usual seat at the foot of his bed.

He watched a pillow inch its way towards her until it came to her reach. She hugged it to her chest, and Will thought this might be a long one.

She didn’t look small — he couldn’t recall a time when he had seen Eleven small. Enraged, yes. Distraught, yes. Maybe even _weak_ at times. But never small. Her hands were tense, kneading the heel of her palm across her thigh, unwilling to meet Will’s eyes.

"What happened?" he asked after it was clear that she wasn’t going to offer any ins.

He saw her jaw flex and maybe even her nostrils flare before she began. "When Mike..." She railed off, and already Will began to suppress the need to roll his eyes. El herself sighed. Mike was something of a sore subject for the two of them. A proverbial minefield that had blown up in their faces many times, bringing nothing but fights and tiffs around the house. "When I started living with Hop, Max joined the Party." She presented it as a fact. A stepping stone to her story.

"Uh, yeah, I guess so. It took a little longer than that." He frowned, looking towards the window. He scraped through his memories of that fall quickly with a fine-tooth comb. He knew it wasn’t that simple. “It took awhile for Mike to accept her.”

She shook her head. "She was cool. She made Mike smile.”

“I don’t remember that.” He remembered a lot more fighting. He remembered how annoyed Mike sounded when he would tell Will about her when he would come over after Will’s appointments with the doctors in Hawkins Lab. And then something happened. Will still didn’t know what. He didn’t want to ask and dredge up old memories. He could still remember the prickling in the back of his neck, the way _He_ made his skin tingle and burn.

But he remembered when it was all over. And Bob was gone, and El was there, and Max became their Zoomer.

“I saw them,” El told him, matter-of-fact. Will twisted his fingertips into the side of his thigh away from El’s vision, snapping himself back into the room just as he’d done to her. “In the gym.” She said it like it made a world of difference to Will. He would never be able to see what she saw, how she saw it. So he took her word on it. Max made Mike smile in the school gymnasium, once. “That made me... Angry."

Will nodded. _That makes sense,_ he thought, as he dropped to the floor and pretzeled his legs under himself. "You got jealous."

"Yes."

He was kind of proud of her at admitting it so easily.

"Because I liked Mike." They both knew that part. It was a fact just like the sky was blue, and Joyce quit smoking because it reminded her too much of Hopper.

Will fiddled with the zipper of his hoodie and shot a look to the pages sitting on his desk. He’d scribbled down lots of campaign ideas since they’d been in Bangor, but this is the first one he’d started writing since he’d left all his books in Hawkins. Gene had asked Will to teach him how to play, and there was no way Will was going to start Gene off with a soggy campaign.

"Yeah," Will agreed, tearing his eyes back to El. "You guys dated."

She nodded as absently as Will was listening. She was beginning to lose his attention. She was probably just going to start telling Will about how much she missed Mike — oh, and he’d started growing a dumb looking moustache, he’d cut his hair. That kind of thing.

He wondered if he could work on his campaign while she talked.

"I..." El looked off to the side, burying her cheek in Will's pillow. "I spied on them."

Will stilled, coming back to her like a ball hitting a paddle. "Like, recently?"

She nodded. "Yesterday."

"Holy shit," he breathed. He rocked up on his knees to face her. "I thought you couldn't see that far anymore."

She picked her head up from the pillow, smiling at him. He saw excitement dancing in her eyes. "I've been practicing,” she told him. “Getting better."

"That's amazing! Why didn’t you tell me?”

Color came up her cheeks. “I didn’t want to excite you if I lost it again.”

“Oh.”

“Please don’t tell Mom.”

He offered his pinky to her, and she didn’t hesitate to take it.

(He remembered when he taught it to her in the first place. _You shake it_ , he said. He laughed so hard he clutched his stomach when she closed her whole hand around his pinky. It was a much needed laugh, and a promise that they were going to try their best to make Bangor a fresh start.

_Like this_ . He took her hand and stuck her pinky out, and then curled his around hers. _There. If we lie, we have to break both our pinkies._ Her face was horrified, and completely worth it.)

He rocked back on his heels, asking: “How are they? How's Mike? Lucas?"

She shook her head, and this time droplets did fly away. Will caught one on his arm. There was a dark blue spot on his light bedsheet. “I didn’t spy on Mike,” she told him.

"What do you mean?" He frowned, sitting back down. He propped one arm up on his knee, watching her piddle through her thoughts.

She found that she could summarize them all up in one word: "Max." She slid off the bed and onto the floor across from him, keeping the pillow tight in her arms.

"Oh. Well, how is she?" El smothered her face into the pillow before picking herself up and tossing it to Will. He caught it and held it in his lap, frowning at her. "Was she bad?"

El shook her head. "She's _happy_." There was a strain in her voice, wobbling from one step in her story to the next. It was like she couldn’t catch her balance, and she was left to flail her arms and wonder how the fuck she was getting out of this.

"Okay." His eyebrows rose slowly. "And that's bad because...?"

"I got jealous."

"Oh." He discarded the pillow and took El in for a moment. She kept her eyes down, but Will could see the red tinge on her face, coloring the bridge of her nose. “You’re jealous because she’s happy?” He guessed there was legitimacy to that. Max was with the Party, still in Hawkins. Still _home_. She was close to Mike, and Will thought that probably counted for a lot. “El, it’s not so bad here.”

Maybe he was biased.

Maybe she agreed with him, because she shook her head. "I'm not jealous that Max is happy."

Will’s brow furrowed. "You lost me." His nose scrunched up as a totally left field thought occurred to him. "Mike and Max haven't started dating, have they?"

She looked at him like he'd lost his marbles. Hey, maybe he had. "No," she scoffed. She made a fake retching noise barely contained in the back of her throat, and Will found himself feeling the exact same way.

El puffed out a sigh and looked at him with a tone of seriousness reserved for late night talks about fathers and monsters that ran around outside of the dark. "When people call you faggot—” Will winced none too delicately.

That word dredged grim feelings and memories to the forefront of his mind. Like the first time he ever heard Lonnie fight with Mom about it. Will couldn’t remember the look on Johnathan’s face when he asked what a _fag_ was, and why daddy thought it was so bad if he was one, but Will could remember the strain in Johnathan’s voice when he told Will that sometimes, dad was wrong about things. Just like then. Will remembered staying awake in the middle of the night, trying to understand what made him so broken, why such a good feeling was so _bad_.

El had cut herself off and apologized softly — but then she went right on. Will’s fist buried itself in his pillow. "When they call you that it means you like boys."

"Yeah," he answered warily, not bothering to remind her that it's a terrible word. One that brands him as sickly and _broken_ . Terrible, because he likes _boys_.

"Is there a word that means you like girls?"

"Straight?" he offered blearily.

He felt like the nice, unorderly stepping stones had been abandoned. They’d fallen face-first into the grass, completely off track.

"No, no," she frowned, staring into his eyes like she could transmit her idea directly from her brain to his. "What if _I_..."

She didn't continue. She left the sentence hinged in the air, half formed and dangerous.

_Oh_.

He tried to reconcile this in his head. It didn’t make sense. El had liked Mike. They dated, and kissed. Sure, El dumped him, but they’d spent plenty of time together before then.

She sat in front of him, searching his face, eyes flitting this way and that. Trying to see any judgement that might be hiding behind freckles and long eyelashes.

Will softened in an instant. "What if _you_ like girls, too?" She shook her head. “Just girls?” That was the ticket. She bobbed her head in a big, fat _YES_. "Lesbian."

"What?"

"That's the word. Lesbian."

She repeated the word softly, a little furrow in her brow. She looked like Gene did when he was practicing his French. She gave extra care to the syllables and how they were crafted, even for such a simple word like _lesbian._ Then, Will guessed, maybe the care was for the importance.

It was like when she first started calling Joyce _Mom_ . She said it with a reverence in her voice — the kind Will put on when they talked to royalty in a campaign. This was something important. Like when Gene called himself a fag, once. Full of secretive pride and bitter refusal to let that word sing _shame_.

“Lesbian,” she said again, smiling this time. “I’m lesbian.”

“ _A_ lesbian,” Will corrected.

She frowned at him. “Huh?”

“You’re _a_ lesbian.”

“Oh. Yeah!” She smiled so wild, so drawn up in her own world.

Before she could drift too far, Will shot his hand up and squinted at her. “Wait, hang on, why were you so jealous of Max?”

“Not of Max,” she objected. Her mouth was pressed into a thin line. “There was a girl with her, when I saw her. She was so pretty.” Will waited for her to go on. She seemed lighter and more willing to discuss the issue, but her joy had faded significantly. “They kissed. Max kissed her. And I thought… how I wanted her to kiss me.”

“Oh…” Will let it trail off. “Isn’t that good? She’s happy?”

She sent him a flat look. He knew it wasn’t the same. It never felt like enough, it hurts, not being the one to make your person happy.

"It's been a long time since we've seen each other," he offered.

"Are you saying she forgot me?" El asked point blank.

Will shook his head. "No. But she broke up with Lucas for good. And then we left. She doesn't know you like girls."

"Just like Mike doesn't know you like boys." She nodded wisely, like she suddenly understood everything.

"Yeah, I mean maybe." He stood up and went to his desk. The breeze from the window had flipped his notebook to a different page. He flipped it back. He didn't look back to El. "He knew, though." He sat down and pulled his sleeves up to his elbows. There was a sketch of a dwarf just under his notebook, colored in yellows and greens.

He could feel El's stare on the back of his neck in an uncomfortable prickle.

"He didn't say he did."

"He didn't always tell you everything, either," he snapped. His shoulders jerked, probably more than she flinched. He didn't apologize, rather just picked up his pencil. "We fought about it once."

"He didn't like it?"

Will's mouth twisted to the side. "We were fighting about something different. He just said something about it then."

She was quiet. "Did he call you a faggot?"

Will shook his head. "No, he didn't. I don't — I've never heard Mike call anyone that."

"That's good."

"Uh huh."

There was a silence between them, strained like baked parchment paper. Singed and ready to break at the ends where it was most exposed to the heat.

He glanced over his shoulder when she stood up to replace his pillow at the head of his bed.

"The girl Max kissed," Will started, twisting towards her again. El, who was halfway to the door, stopped and turned to face him. "Is she her girlfriend?"

"I don't know," she said. "She was very pretty."

"So are you."

El nodded, accepting the compliment but looking like a traumatized soldier from the trenches with a far off look in her eyes. "She's prettier. Like Deanna Troy. From Star Trek. With curly hair and pretty lips."

Will's eyebrows jumped up a tick. "That's very pretty."

"Yes. She wore cherry lip gloss. Max said she liked it."

Will's face scrunched up. "Oh my God, ew. _Ew_ , I don't want to hear anything about Max making out with another girl."

El laughed. He watched as she tugged her robe righter around her and flopped onto his bed. "I wanted to taste it, too," she told him, giddy and excited.

Will made a sick noise in the back of his throat.

She craned her neck to look at him, her face slack in disbelief. "You told me what it was like to kiss Gene!" she protested, in a tone somewhere between a whisper and a yell.

Will's nose crinkled. "That's not the same!"

"Yes it _is_ ," she argued. She propped herself up on her elbows for a second before sitting back up. "You said you liked it."

"Well... yeah, because I did." His cheeks burned, and he deliberately turned back to his notebook to hide his embarrassment. "But I'm not the one who thinks Max's new girlfriend is _pretty_."

"You would if you could see her," she told him confidently. And hey, maybe it was true, but Will couldn't argue her point when they were half the country away from Hawkins, not even supposed to know that this girl existed. "She makes Max smile. And laugh. Like she laughed the day when we went to Starcourt."

Will pulled a sour face. "At the end?"

She shook her head. "No. When I dumped Mike's ass."

" _Oh_!"

"Mhm! We had fun." She tucked her hands under her thighs and took in a big breath. "I want to see her again."

"We're going to see them when summer comes."

She just rolled her eyes. "That's so long away," she whined.

"It'll be worth it," Will promised.

She shrugged a small agreement and heaved herself up from the bed. She actually made it to the door this time. "Good night."

"Night, El," he returned. "Sleep well. Don't spy anymore tonight."

"I won't." She lifted her pinky, smiling. "Pinky promise."

Will gave a sure nod. "Pinky promise."

She left, shutting the door softly behind her.

Will looked back to his notebook, and found that he'd lost his place. His train of thought had been derailed so severely that the engine had capsized and caught fire. The caboose was all that was standing, the very end of his thought, an inkling that was almost useless for his purposes.

Damn it.

He pushed his notebook away and began getting ready for bed, realizing that nothing else was going to get done. Besides, he had a little bit to think about. His sister was a _lesbian_. God, it was almost funny.

**Author's Note:**

> my main tumblr is @[littlemumman](https://littlemumman.tumblr.com/) but my it blog is @[stansflowercap](https://stansflowercap.tumblr.com/) \-- because i know those things overlap sometimes.
> 
> please water my crops and comment


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